


part of the past, but now you're the future

by Elizabeth (anghraine)



Series: now you're the future [2]
Category: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story (2016), Star Wars - All Media Types
Genre: Cybernetics, Dorks in Love, F/M, Friendship, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Serious Injuries, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-15
Updated: 2017-05-15
Packaged: 2018-11-01 01:12:26
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,455
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10911261
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/anghraine/pseuds/Elizabeth
Summary: After narrowly surviving his injuries on Scarif, Cassian wakes to the loss of Kay, uncertainty about Jyn, and a damaged spine.(Direct sequel tothreshold of a dream.)





	part of the past, but now you're the future

**Author's Note:**

> I meant to do a fluffy hurt-comfort thing for Day 2 of Rebelcaptain Appreciation Week, "Comfort," but ... that didn't work on multiple levels. However, it is a Jyn/Cassian fic revolving around comfort (...weeks late), so there's that.

Cassian didn’t know if he would ever go back into the field.

Not because of his very real distaste for it, and not because of self-pity. It was just the doctors and droids, with their anxious-cheerful voices, assuring him that he would very probably walk again.

“Almost certainly,” stressed Dr Tanth.

Cassian was not often at a loss for words.

“Oh,” he said. “Good.”

Tanth kept talking, and the droids, but he tuned them out. For once, it didn’t seem important to catch every detail. He’d walk, or he wouldn’t. The chances appeared to be in his favour, though he couldn’t know more precisely without Kay to—

Without—

He’d never anticipated this. It was foolish, of course; a single droid, however powerful, could always be destroyed. Easily, even. Cassian knew that. But he didn’t think he would live long enough to see it. Anything that could take out Kay would have long since taken out _him._ Kay himself gloated … used to gloat that he would still be in peak condition after Cassian had gone through five or six iterations.

(Cassian had briefly considered explaining how organic reproduction worked, then decided he would rather do literally anything else.)

It seemed almost obscene that his vulnerable human body had outlasted Kay’s circuits. He’d been shot and smashed his spine and cracked his bones until he could no longer hold himself upright, but with Kay reduced to a smear of metal, somehow Cassian hung on. Through that excruciating climb—and then, there was Jyn. He didn’t know that she hadn’t sustained him through will alone.

“That’s Alderaanian,” she’d said when he swore under his breath. Cassian squinted through his unsteady vision as he swerved their shuttle around laserfire. His records said he was a competent pilot in his own right, but he felt half of one in the instant. “Is that where you’re from?”

“No,” he panted, forcing his attention away from burning pain in his side and back and legs, and onto the warmth and strength of her grip on his shoulder. “Fieste.”

Her hand tightened and his focus narrowed with it, as if her fortitude somehow bled into him, arced along her fingertips. He’d done this before, flying alone and injured, with smaller stakes than Jyn’s life. Dodge, calculate, time the jump.

He knew that they would die if he couldn’t do it this time. Joyless as his life was, Cassian dreaded death; but he dreaded it for Jyn still more. Most of all like this. Dying on Scarif, however horrific, would have made a certain terrible sense. Their lives for the mission. But this? No. Jyn couldn’t get killed by the Empire’s cannon fodder.

She _wouldn’t._

Jyn had stayed quiet, as usual, while Cassian plotted the coordinates. But when he counted down under his breath, she unhesitatingly yanked down the hyperdrive clutch, and they slid smoothly into lightspeed.

For a long few seconds, they just watched the whirling lights of hyperspace. But his head spun, and agony splintered through almost every part of his body. Behind the pilot’s seat, Jyn was fumbling with something he couldn’t see.

Even his breath felt thin and difficult, something that might betray him at any moment. He’d only taken this kind of damage a few times, and never without Kay.

She’d said she couldn’t fly. He thought so, anyway. Cassian would collapse soon enough, but it couldn’t be now. He had to land the shuttle on Yavin, had to keep concentrating.

Teeth clenched, he said, “Can … you talk?”

“Of course I can,” replied Jyn, her voice clear and steady even as she wrangled with whatever she’d found. He hadn’t expected so immediate or easy an assent, even now. Sure enough, she stayed silent at first, a heavy pause that stretched on like the starlight around them. Then, voice shriller than he’d ever heard it, she said, “Fieste? I’ve never heard of it.”

“You wouldn’t.” Cassian had to close his eyes; he thought he might throw up, otherwise. “Not important. Outer Rim. And you don’t … Basic. Fest.”

It all made sense in his head. Yet, for one of the only times in his life, thoughts didn’t translate smoothly into words, the bonds between head and heart and speech worn near to snapping. 

Just his head alone … his mind didn’t work quite right, he could tell. Everything jolted along uneven paths, simple sentences meandering off. Even without the sharp, hot anguish that swallowed up nearly all else, he couldn’t—he kept slipping in and out of the blue glow, exhaustion more threatening than a dozen cracked bones.

_Jyn_ , he reminded himself. She jostled him again, pain slicing through him, but his eyes flew open. Jyn was here, and he had to get her home. He’d promised. _Talk to me._

And Jyn, always so taciturn and brusque, had talked. She carried on that one-sided conversation until her voice went hoarse, cracked. At that, she dredged up water, gulped it all down, then talked on.

Cassian couldn’t follow most of it, but that didn’t matter. He latched onto her voice, and kept flying.

Now, some unknown number of days later, she was gone.

Not permanently, as far as he knew, and he didn’t anticipate that. He could think of above half a dozen things she might be doing: showering, sleeping, praying, fighting, a wide range of possible meetings. Also, every time before now—and Cassian gathered that he’d been in and out of surgery at least a week—he had woken to Jyn hovering nearby like some bad-tempered falcon, and she wasn’t the sort to run. Others would probably doubt that, but he didn’t really care. Cassian trusted his judgment and he trusted Jyn.

Perhaps unwisely in this case. But Jyn did not turn her back on anyone who had not first turned theirs on her. And it was Cassian’s nature to expect nothing and hope for everything; he had not followed it this far to turn back now.

“—to test the fusion of the implants with nervous tissue,” Tanth was droning on.

Cassian focused on him. “Cybernetic implants?”

Startled, Tanth said, “Yes, of course.”

Before he could reply, they both heard a shrill robotic voice from outside the room.

“You can stay here until Dr Tanth finishes the consultation.”

“I can also tear your circuits out,” said Jyn calmly.

Cassian was repressing a smile before she even walked in. When she did, he noticed two things right away: she looked livid, and she was wearing one of his jackets.

“There you are,” he said without thinking, then almost winced.

“Here I am,” agreed Jyn. Her voice betrayed nothing, but her scowl faded into what seemed very much like self-satisfaction as she strolled over and flung herself into the nearest chair. She studied him, with a clinical air that meant it signified little, but—

“You look better.” She glanced over at Tanth. “He’s had another surgery? How did it go?”

The doctor shifted, pretending to examine his datapad. The light it cast didn’t so much as flicker; there couldn’t actually be anything new. “Ah … I can’t—the patient—”

Cassian, not bothering to wait him out, waved this aside. “You can tell her anything.”

Though Jyn remained withdrawn, she gave one of her slight, ambiguous smiles.

“Well,” said Tanth, “as I was saying, captain, we’ll want to test the integration of the cybernetic implants into the organic material.”

Jyn narrowed her eyes. “The organic material of his _spine_?”

“Yes,” he said shortly, while Cassian fought off a wave of exhaustion. He felt like he’d slept more in the last … whatever, than in the five years before. It was unnatural, and felt it, his dreams strange, and his mind disoriented when he woke up or went to sleep. They must be drugging him—and if so, they must have a reason, since the Rebellion never wasted resources. In all probability, he couldn’t help it, but he felt like he should be able to power through. Cassian frowned, trying to concentrate on the doctor.

Something, something, antibodies. Tanth’s mouth kept moving, but it didn’t seem quite right. About the edges, he blurred into the background.

Cassian turned his gaze on Jyn, instead. She was nearer, and more real. Not fuzzy at all, just sitting there in his leather jacket, frowning.

“—what do you mean by ‘almost certainly?’” she was saying. Her fingers lay over his wrist, though he wasn’t sure she’d noticed herself placing them there. He hadn’t.

“Exactly what I said, Miss Erso,” replied Tanth. Jyn must have given her name at some point. “It depends on the success of the cybernetics, and the success rate is very high.”

“How high?”

The pause lingered, like so many of the pauses she left behind her.

“Pardon?”

Jyn’s hand curled around his wrist, her grip tight enough to hurt. Cassian said nothing, since he didn’t mind. It couldn’t begin to compare to everything else, and regardless, the brush of her skin more than made up for it.

In short, clipped syllables, she snapped, “Doctor, I want numbers.”

Kay would have them. Kay would already be haranguing Tanth and Jyn alike—and Cassian, too, but with the undertone of devotion he showed no one else.

He hadn’t programmed Kay to love him. You couldn’t, really. Even before the reprogramming, Kay loathed the Imperial captain who owned him. But not Cassian.

“Are you my master now?” he’d said doubtfully. “You do not appear to be a fully advanced version of your subclass.”

“No,” Cassian told him. “I just wanted to help. You’re free.”

“Free,” K-2SO repeated, as if he didn’t quite understand.

Cassian could believe it. In all probability, Imperial droids never had cause to understand freedom. So he said,

“It means you can do and say whatever you want.”

K-2SO peered around, eyes flickering. It took him a good minute.

“I find this room utterly unappealing.”

Cassian burst out laughing. He was still very young, and it didn’t trouble him that he had creatively interpreted his orders. With the bright certainty that always guided him, however opaque his path, he knew it had been the best thing to do. And he’d been less cautious in those days, less constrained.

Back then, only his skill at programming made him useful, since he’d grown too old to play at tragic orphan, too big to slip into tiny spaces, and too youthful for recruitment or combat. Instead, he got assigned to the laborious process of learning, writing, and adapting the codes for assorted devices. In this case, that meant 1) wiping the memory of a potentially valuable security droid, 2) identifying and stripping out the bonds of his Imperial programming, and 3) replacing them with Alliance ones for security. Cassian only managed the second of these things.

One of his rare but recurrent episodes of insubordination, he supposed. But he hadn’t thought of it that way. He only thought it impossible to do otherwise. Cassian had not joined the Rebellion to turn Imperial slaves into Alliance slaves; he was here for liberation.

“Let’s see if you’re working properly,” he said.

K-2SO’s eyes flashed, head tilted in what would be thought, were he human. Running scans? Basically the same thing.

“You have not altered any essential processes.”

“No,” said Cassian, appalled. “You wouldn’t be _you._ ”

Before the droid could try to process that, Major Derlin showed up to check his progress. To Cassian’s alarm, he seemed angry as much as surprised.

“What were you thinking?” he demanded, while K-2SO amused himself with making clinking noises and slouching.

“I didn’t think the Rebellion kept slaves,” Cassian said sharply. “Sir.”

Derlin stared at him. Some part of his outrage seemed to have subsided, though not all. He took a step forward—probably to examine the droid more closely. He wasn’t a violent man.

K-2SO, however, did not know that. Without hesitation, he seized Cassian’s arm and shoved him behind his own towering frame, hard enough that Cassian staggered and fell, gracelessly.

“You are a small and decaying specimen of your kind,” he informed Derlin. “Your odds of overpowering me are less than one percent.” He turned his head to peer down at Cassian. “This one is mine.”

“Uh,” said Cassian. “You can’t own people. That’s the point.”

K-2SO’s eyes flickered. “You misunderstand. I am a security droid. Now, I shall secure you.” He was already glowering at Derlin again. “Forever.”

Cassian, speechless, gawked at the droid’s back. He would be covered with bruises in the morning, but that didn’t seem important. He couldn’t remember the last time someone had sheltered him, or anything like it.

Dimly, he realized: everything had changed.

“Thanks?”

Of course, in the middle of a Rebel base, even a droid of Kay’s stature and strength could be easily overpowered. If they wanted Kay bolted and coded into obedience, it would have happened. Instead, Draven interceded with the bemused Derlin. He kept Cassian on a leash, but a long one. While nobody could say Draven coddled anyone, Cassian later realized that he’d seen potential in him, quick and clever and convincing at fourteen. No point in burning through the ideals of a protégé who would do anything for his convictions, and therefore the Rebellion, as long as he saw them bound together.

And even among droids, Draven valued loyalty above obedience. He always said that free droids were far more effective, when reliable. He might be no Jedi, but no doubt Draven had foreseen—in his way—a time when a loyal, independent droid watching Cassian’s back would be more than worth the loss of a bolted one.

So Kay retained his new programming, and Cassian gained a protector. He was almost giddy; it seemed like the kind of story his sister might have read to him. A boy and his droid.

_Not mine. He’s a free droid._ Anyway, he didn’t feel like a boy.

A Rebel and his friend, maybe. That was better, better than anything. He hadn’t had anyone to care about for eight years, since his brother and sisters got shot.

But then there was Kay. For twelve years, Kay’s hulking body clumped at Cassian’s side or behind his back; for twelve years, he complained when Cassian replaced some defunct part or upgraded to a new one, though he gloated insufferably after; for twelve years, he delivered odds and mowed through stormtroopers and aggressively slouched around bases and ships alike. Twelve, twelve: it cycled through his head like Chirrut’s mantras. Twice the length of time Cassian had been alive when the clonetroopers came.

In his head, _Cassian, nos enti—¡corre, corre!_ muddled in his head with _Goodbye_ , clonetroopers joining with unseen stormtroopers, memories of peering up through rubble mingled with his horror as he gazed down at Jyn. He’d seen her swallow after he screamed, either in grief of her own or sympathy, and then there’d been … the plans, the Rebellion, they overrode everything. 

Even Kay, for the moment. And Jyn was—he had to find Jyn. That man in white was somewhere up there, and the remaining deathtroopers. Maybe reinforcements. He had to get to her, for the plans and for—just, Jyn. Her name shrieked through his head, as it so often did: _Jyn, Jyn, Jyn, **Jyn**!_

Cassian couldn’t do much at that point. But he could climb and he could shoot. And he could block the way to her if needed, take another blaster bolt. Maybe several, like Kay.

“Captain?”

It took a strong exertion of effort to drag himself back into the infirmary. He squinted, trying to get the edges of the room to stop swimming.

“If you’re willing, then I’ll just have you sign here.” Tanth handed him a datapad.

Cassian blinked down at it. He had no idea what the man was talking about.

As he tried to make it out, something dug into his left hand. Jyn’s nails.

“Look at me, Cassian,” she ordered, in a tone that suggested she’d already said it a few times.

He turned to her, not really comprehending, but responding to her tone more than the words, and contented enough with the slide of her hand on his. Or, not contented, but … soothed? Perhaps.

Jyn stared into his eyes. Not like in the elevator, regrettably. She looked more irritated than anything.

“I thought so.” She shifted to look at Tanth, jaw tight and brows furrowed. Not angry, but definitely displeased. “Maybe you could time these conversations for when he’s not high as the stars?”

That seemed … oddly poetic. For Jyn.

“Thanks,” she said dryly. If the doctor replied—though Cassian wasn’t sure why she’d be thanking him—he didn’t catch it. But Jyn went on, “They want to run a test to make sure the surgeries have done what they’re supposed to. Understand that?”

“Yes,” he said. They’d been talking about that for … an hour? Or whatever it was.

Jyn’s mouth twitched for some reason. “And then they’re going to do one more, which should get you functioning without medicine. Are you fine with that?”

“Yes.” Why wouldn’t he be?

Her fingers tapped unconsciously over his palm. He presumed unconsciously. It was nice either way, though he took care not to say so. Even drugged half out of his mind, he knew he had to keep some things to himself.

Jyn cared, to be sure. At this very moment, she jabbed the doctor with as many questions as Kay would have asked, held his hand again. Back in the Citadel, she’d screamed as he fell. When she saw his injuries afterwards, she flashed from triumph to murder almost faster than he could grasp her. 

And, in the elevator—Cassian could still feel her boxing him in, small as she was, her arm slipping around his neck and face lifting up to him. Even so, he had to bend his head down: not that it troubled him, even through the pain piercing every part of his body. Her mouth pressed against his, as soft and tentative as they’d been in the shuttle, and it wasn’t like the others at all—he _wanted_ this—

Yet he didn’t think it was quite the same for her. Cassian had been completely charmed since he saw her trouncing stormtroopers on the streets of Jedha, except when he lost his temper, and mostly he didn’t. But his heart nearly stopped every time he realized her life was in danger, and often it was. Jyn stopped at nothing, suffered not a flicker of weakness in herself; she would be dead near a half-dozen times if he hadn’t been there. If he’d been just that bit slower, or weaker, or less accurate. He could have been. He certainly was now.

In any case, she didn’t panic as he did, or look half out of her mind, as he felt, or any of that. It didn’t bother him. This … indistinct affection was more than he’d ever anticipated from another living person. She had called him her friend after a week, and felt furiously betrayed after another, and drawn close and smiling in the third. It was something. He just didn’t want her to feel any sort of—expectation.

As ever, he hoped, but did not expect.

“Cassian!” Jyn blew her hair out of her face, or tried. “Are you listening?”

“No,” Cassian said, honesty a rare luxury. He thought about it. “I keep getting lost.”

She studied him, her own eyes wide. They weren’t like jade, or emeralds, or anything like that; from a distance, they looked vaguely grey or even blue. This close, though, he could see the pale green of her irises, the dark grey rings circling the edges, spokes as brown as his own flaring out from the pupil like dark stars. A bright, uninterrupted green would be less interesting. This wasn’t something that could be approximated by a rock.

Thankfully—he thought later—Cassian clung to enough sanity to keep his mouth shut on that, too.

“Give me the datapad,” she said.

“Miss—”

“He can’t consent,” said Jyn. It made sense, though he couldn’t remember anyone ever bothering themselves over the finer details of that. “I’m next of kin, I’ll sign for it. He agreed as far as he could follow, anyway.”

Cassian handed it over, though not without complaining, “I am right here.”

She just pushed her fringe out of her eyes again. He sympathized. In fact, he tried to lift his free hand to his brow, but it felt impossibly heavy, as if it were as much a cybernetic as the implants in his back.

Abruptly, he said, “Am I a cyborg?”

Jyn had been grumbling under her breath, and he thought the doctor, too. Maybe at each other. But both broke off, now. He could tell they were staring at him, even though he couldn’t have sworn the former was human, at this far away.

“Uh,” Tanth said. “We don’t generally apply the term with respect to purely internal cybernetics. You won’t be considered one on your personnel records, certainly.”

That was answer enough. Right, he thought. Okay.

“If that’s all …”

Jyn handed over the datapad with a dismissive gesture, and Dr Tanth receded. Cassian thought he did. At least, the space that he’d occupied looked empty, and a pleasant quietness settled around them. It was one of the many things he liked about Jyn; so many people rushed to make clamour out of peace, like the Empire. Jyn dwelt in silences—sometimes venturing out, but always returning again. She could deliver monologues without a word.

He, not so much. For Cassian, words were less tools of clarification than extensions of himself: sometimes artificial, but always rooted in his own being. He held them close, most often; that did not make them absent.

“There’s no difference,” he announced.

Jyn eyed him. Since he liked her eyes, it didn’t matter.

“No difference between what?”

“The cybernetics,” said Cassian. “Outside or inside—why should that change anything?”

She shrugged. “Aesthetics. It’s not about science.”

The disdain in her voice caught him. Her father’s, perhaps, though it seemed she would have been too young to absorb much before his disappearance. She’d been older than Cassian, though—eight or nine, not six. She would remember more. He thought the mother had been a scientist, too.

“Do you mind it?” Jyn asked, voice awkward and brows knit.

Puzzled, he said, “Science?”

She made a strangled sound that he couldn’t quite identify. “The cyborg thing.”

“Oh.” His thoughts tried to wander again, but for the instant, Cassian held them fast. He shook his head, everything spinning. Even like this, the laugh in his ears sounded strange. “No. I was just thinking that Kay would be delighted.”

Jyn’s mouth curved, the smile tight but real. Like him, she had lines about her eyes, and they deepened now.

“One step closer to droid superiority?”

“Exactly.” He felt surprised that she saw it, and utterly unsurprised, all at once. But they’d understood each other in the end, Kay and Jyn. If he had escaped, they might have made a remarkable pair. The two of them really did have plenty in common, though Cassian valued his skin enough not to say so. “He liked you.”

Jyn snorted.

“Eventually.”

“Like captain, like droid?” She was blurry now, too, so he needed the words to hang onto.

“No,” he said. “I liked you from Jedha. When you clobbered all the stormtroopers.” Cassian almost let himself sink into that memory, so much pleasanter than thinking about Kay. But she was here as much as there, the fingers on his hand curling up in—surprise?—and relaxing again.

“It would be that,” said Jyn, amused. “But I didn’t notice.”

“I know.” He narrowed his eyes enough to make her out through the heaviness in his head, and through his hair. She looked—soft, almost, in a way he’d only seen once or twice. 

In the hangar, he remembered, when she seemed to truly realize he wouldn’t abandon her. She’d drifted forward into their odd sort of binary orbit, tilting her face up and smiling like every burden in her life had just tumbled off her shoulders. Like she had no desire to be anywhere else, with anyone else. It’d been the same here, earlier, when she leaned down and echoed his _welcome home._

Now, Jyn snapped her fingers in front of his face. “You need to go to sleep.”

Probably.

“You’re wearing my jacket,” he pointed out.

Colour rose to her cheeks. He didn’t think he’d seen her do that, _ever._

“My vest is disgusting,” said Jyn, with an air of casual unconcern that he didn’t even slightly believe. “I had to wear something.”

First he thought of saying that she might have stolen from someone her size, or at least her gender; then he thought of saying that she could have just taken one of his shirts, since the leather jacket was warm for Massassi; and, finally, he thought of asking just how much time she had spent in his quarters.

“Right,” Cassian said.

Her voice quickening, she went on, “The other coats were much too big. I like how I look in this one, though.”

Valiantly, he tried to think of any reply other than _so do I._

“Did you steal another blaster?”

“What do you think I am?” Even through his haze, he could see that Jyn looked offended. She lifted the edge of the coat to reveal her hip, where sure enough, one of his older blasters rested. “Of course I did.”

“You’ll get a better model,” Cassian said vaguely. A new alarm struck him. “If you stay with the Alliance.”

Somehow, between that moment and the next, Jyn went from seated at his side to bracing his shoulder with one hand, the other reclining the chair into a bed. Even a half-hearted effort to stay upright on his own lashed fire down his back.

“Lie _down_ ,” said Jyn, from wherever she was. Near.

Now he obeyed without hesitation, trying to catch his breath.

“The new surgery should fix that,” she told him. “And the final bacta treatment. That’s this afternoon.”

He barely caught that, mind stuck on his previous thought. Nothing about the ceiling eased it. Nor did the one lock of his fringe that always fell over his eyes. Irritably, he blew at it, as Jyn had her own, but with no more success.

“Where will you be?” Cassian asked, too sleepy and dazed to even speculate at how he sounded. He closed his eyes. “You’re free.”

There was a long pause, and then Jyn’s voice:

“I’m not going anywhere.” Someone touched his brow, so hesitant that he barely felt it. Then, more confidently, they stroked his hair out of his face. “Go to sleep, Cassian.”


End file.
